Despite the failure of the city of Munich to move away from Microsoft software, another German government entity has now decided it wants to ditch the American software giant. The state parliament of the German state of Schleswig-Holstein has decided that the state administration should only use free software in the long term.
Last Thursday, a large majority of the state parliament decided that in the long term Microsoft software will be banned from the state administration computers. The goal is to completely replace closed source software by open source software. The parliament has asked its central IT management to report in the first quarter of 2020 on how, and in what time frame, the plan can be realized.
With the move, the state also hopes to become less dependent of large IT companies and to provide opportunities to small and mid-sized companies.
Schleswig-Holstein follows Munich in trying to switch to open-source software. In 2003, the city of Munich, the third largest country of Germany, decided it would move away from Windows NT 4.0 after Microsoft ended support for the operating system. It was decided that the city would switch to a Linux based operating system and Microsoft Office was initially replaced by Open Office and later LibreOffice.
In 2006, the actual migration started and by May 2009, more than 1,800 desktop computers were running LiMux, an Ubuntu based OS. By that time, 12,000 computers were migrated to Open Office. In December 2013, Munich reported the switch to open source software was completed successfully and in August 2014, the mayor stated the city was considering to move back to Windows due to productivity problems. The transition back to Microsoft software would cost millions of euros.
In November 2017 the city council decided the LiMux operating system would be replaced by Windows based infrastructure by the end of 2020 with an estimated cost of €90 million.
The Schleswig-Holstein administration hopes that providing employees with intensive training sessions will ensure a more positive outcome than in Munich.
